


An Unpredictable Prediction

by apocryphile



Category: West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:04:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apocryphile/pseuds/apocryphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing scene from Stormy Present. Josh asks the burning question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unpredictable Prediction

**Author's Note:**

> My heartfelt apologies, but while sex is discussed in this story, the M rating is for language, not explicitness.

It was so late it was almost early again, and while they hadn’t so much finished anything as come to a lull in the inevitable frenzy, he was about to wrap things up for the night. 

Donna was perched on his desk, right next to where he was slumped in his chair, and she looked as tired as he felt. Neither of them had found the time to change back out of their redundant formalwear. 

Even now, when she was nearly asleep upright, she was breathtaking in her dress, and he was looking forward to an occasion when he’d actually get to show her off in it. He wanted to tell her that, if only he could find a less proprietary turn of phrase.

And tonight, she’d been quickest with both logistical solutions and compassion for the late President’s family, and he was proud of her, and he wanted to tell her that too.

And so of course, what came out of his mouth was, “Did you really lose your virginity at 16?”

She gaped at him.

“I did. And you don’t get to be horrified.”

He was, and he paused so he didn’t accidentally end up saying so. What bubbled up instead wasn’t a dramatic improvement.

“How was it?”

“You don’t get to ask me that, either.”

He felt it was wisest to stop talking, but wasn’t terribly surprised when she carried on.

“It was actually pretty good, considering. He was gentle and patient. Which is a lot more than I can say for… well.”

Josh bristled, and actually started out of his chair. She half frowned, half chuckled at him.

“Josh, you don’t get to go around beating up my ex-boyfriends for being disappointing lovers.”

“Why not?”

She shook her head, but she was smiling, and he felt something in the air change –intangible reservations he could no longer grasp the rationale for fell away, and some indefinable thing about her stance, the soft angles of her arms alongside the curves of her body (as opposed to folded across her chest) buoyed his confidence.

“It would be unseemly.”

He smiled at her choice of words, and dropped his voice to a whisper.

“I could make it up to you.”

He watched the implications register, and belatedly considered ducking the slap he half expected and knew he probably deserved. To his amazement, she didn’t even move from her perch on his desk, but when she spoke, she was practically hissing.

“Josh, I’m not going to let you fuck me just to make you feel superior.”

The expletive spurred him on. He stood, and his face was inches from hers. He all but growled his response in her ear.

“No, but you could let me fuck you to make you feel really, really, really good.”

She flushed. Not just her face – a rosy blush spread below the neckline of her dress, and nearly floored him entirely. 

He was dancing on thin ice here – instead of gently nudging aside their barriers the way he’d always expected to, he was storming the keep all guns blazing, taking a far greater risk than her breaking up with him before he’d ever even kissed her, which is what he usually worried about. 

“Don’t you think it might be a little awkward, coming back to work here tomorrow, after that?”

Her tone was still icy, but he could read a genuine question in her eyes. He summoned a sentiment he’d always been terrified of sharing lest it be crushed and offered it up with something that felt almost like a prayer.

“I don’t know, Donna. I get the feeling that if you let me touch you, it’s going be the last first time, for both of us.”

It was then that she propelled herself off the desk and stumbled out of his office.

He found that he honestly didn’t know whether she’d taken him seriously or not. He was reasonably confident she’d guessed – if not before tonight, then at least in the last few minutes – that he no longer cared at all what anyone else thought of his behaviour. He really didn’t want to think about Angela Blake in this context, but, well, that was pretty much why. He still worried, overwhelmingly, about what people would think of her – but then, he knew that if he really put that ahead of everything else, he’d have found her a new job when he was first ostracised. 

He crossed to the doorway and propped himself against the frame, watching her stand stock still right behind her desk chair. Oddly, she didn’t look the least bit absurd in her dress amidst the bureaucratic clutter of the bullpen. 

She fiddled with the clasps in her hair and slowly gathered her wrap from where it lay, haphazardly pooled next to her keyboard. He was about to give up hope when she sped up her movements, and, decisively, grabbed her coat and walked back to stand in front of him.

“Take me home.”

She was staring at her feet in those impossible shoes, and he suddenly felt a rush of gratitude for the 16-year-old boy who’d taken such care with her, fewer years ago than he really wanted to consider too carefully at that moment.

“Your… your home, or my home?”

“Mine.”

His heart stopped, but then she looked up and smiled shyly at him.

“But you should stay.”

Even as the enormity of what would be happening next crystallised in his mind, he found himself about to protest that they should go to his apartment instead. Smirking at him – blushing again – she elbowed him gently in the ribs.

“Trust you to be territorial right now. My roommate is away, and I am not going home tomorrow morning wearing this.”

He closed his mouth. Tomorrow morning. He felt like he weighed nothing.

He had walked to work, however many hours or eons ago, but when he was about to ask the security desk to find them a cab, she’d steered him towards the lot and her pathetic excuse for a car.

“You can drive.”

They both registered the entirely unsubtle double entendre, and he tried valiantly not to grin like a complete idiot.

Waiting at a light near Dupont Circle, she took his hand, and he nearly turned them around and made her wait back at the office, suspended in their earlier moment, while he somehow found a diamond ring he could spend way too much money on in the middle of the night, the only way he could think of to make this even more significant than it already was, and still somehow not momentous enough, after everything. 

When his head cleared, he was just glad he hadn’t crashed, although he was all too aware of how utterly poetic that would have been.

By the time they turned into her street, it could have been the end of any number of late nights, except that instead of sitting in the idling car talking to her for so long she sat down on the front steps, as had happened many times over the years, he parked, and accompanied her in. This had happened often enough for various boring reasons that it wasn’t until she locked the door behind them that he remembered what he’d blurted, earlier, to try and make up for talking about fucking her in that tone of voice, about first times and last times, because he knew that everything would change.

And she let him touch her, and as he had predicted, everything changed.

And they wished, later, that either one of them could remember precisely what had happened next, because, as he predicted, it would prove to be the last first time for both of them. But neither would ever recall who had kissed who, or where they’d spent those first, frantic, breathless minutes, or why they’d removed almost everything she was wearing – somewhere in the living room – before even attending to his jacket which was found carefully hung on the handle of her bedroom door.

The moment he remembers, will always remember, came when facing each other at the foot of her bed, she’d stilled his ministrations by taking his hands and stepping back.

“About what you said earlier.”

He winced.

“Which part?”

She’d just tilted her head to one side and continued, gently.

“You don’t have to impress me, Josh. You don’t have anything to prove. This will be better, because it’s you. Because you know me. So don’t overthink it.”

They both knew that would be almost impossible, but she’d tried one last thing to get his brain to shut up. Stepping back into his arms, she’d whispered in his ear, her breath tickling his neck and sending a jolt of electricity through him.

“Just love me, Josh.”

And it had worked.

**Author's Note:**

> I know I've seen the "last first time" idea in another story, but I cannot for the life me remember who it was by, and my Google!Fu is failing me. If anyone does know, please let me know in the comments, I would love to include a link to it here - it's a lovely idea that evidently resonated with me!


End file.
